Izuku was doing all he could to not think about his results. He was given fifteen minutes and the world's strongest quirk, and still couldn't earn a single point. His heart sank at the thought of how much he must have disappointed All Might. Yet All Might didn't sound disappointed. He told him to go on a run and exercise, forget about his worries, and focus on something else.

It was unfortunate he didn't play video games or he would have a more easily accessible means of distraction. Though doing such would take time out of his workout routine, and could even make him more stressed depending on what he plays.

Music was an option, but he wasn't sure what to listen to. He didn't even listen to music on his runs. Rock music could be too intense depending on the sub-genre, metal was... definitely not an option for him, pop music was alright, but he had enough of that from hearing his mom play it all the time when he was in the car with her.

All Might made it sound like everything would be fine, but what was he supposed to do now? Would he find someone else to be his successor or would he have to try again next year? Maybe he should have listened to Katsuki and quit before his dreams were shattered.

He could at least hold his chin up high. Nothing has yet confirmed his failure or success. He didn't know when the letter from the school should arrive, and that much had been driving him mad for the past three weeks. It was a nauseating feeling, just waiting to be told he didn't make it in.

Izuku continued jogging, turning a corner and seeing a coffee shop just up ahead. It had been a while since he'd had something to drink, and hydration was important. He could at least go in and ask for water, and he had money on him in case they charge for that.

He slowed down his pace as he made it closer to the front door. The outside had an older aesthetic to it in its wooden design, taking on the appearance of something more akin to the design of an early 1900s American or French coffee house, even with its Japanese take on the style. It's letters were more modern format instead of traditional Japanese calligraphy.

Upon entering the establishment he was immediately hit by a blast of temperature-controlled air. It was cool enough to wash away the heat he built up, but not so cold to match the true temperature outside. Despite the shop's outside appearance, the inside was more modernized, matching the appearance of most stereotypical coffee shops.

"You're sick?" asked a man behind the counter on the phone. "How bad is it?" he asked again.

Izuku began to saunter up to the countertop with his hands to the side, ready to pull out his wallet if he needed to pay. He stood at the counter waiting for the man to get off the phone so he could ask for some water.

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that," he said, sounding genuinely concerned for his employee's health. "I'll call in Kobayashi-kun and see if he can come in. You stay home and get some rest. Bye, Kamishiro-san." He then looked over to the boy and approached the counter as well. "I'm so sorry about that, how may I help you?"

"Can I... uhh... just get a water, please?" he asked.

"Of course! I'll be right back!" Izuku watched the man walk into the back of the store and grab a small glass off the bottom shelf. He heard him start up the tap. When he came back he brought a full glass of water and placed it in front of Izuku. "Here you go. Would you like anything to eat as well?"

"N-no thank you," he said. "How much for water?"

"Free of charge. Not unless you want to take the glass with you," he joked. Izuku awkwardly laughed along. "How's your school year going?"

"I-it's fine," he answered, still getting over his anxiety when talking with others. "I tried getting into U.A., but I'm not sure if I made the cut."

"The school down the road? he asked, rhetorically. "Don't worry if you didn't make the Hero Course – assuming that's what you tried to get into."

Izuku nodded and said, "Yeah, that one." His head tilted down in a shame he tried to hide.

"My nephew tried to get into the Hero Course there a few years ago. He didn't make it so he opted for their general education course instead. Even if it isn't Hero studies, they do still provide a very good education overall. If you fail the Hero part, you can at least apply for their general education program." He had a point, now that Izuku thought about it.

Even if he didn't get into the Hero Course, there must be some way to move up the metaphorical ranks and get into the Hero Course that way. Perhaps if one of the students drops out, he might be able to put in an application and compete with other students for the open seat. Maybe by then, he would have a better handle of his newfound Quirk. Yet that was a pretty big if. Not many people would simply drop out of the Hero Course, given how it was a passion for many.

For now, there wasn't much he could do but wait. All Might said it would be fine, so he trusted him. Not to imply Izuku doubted his integrity, but he was confident All Might would make sure his blessing didn't go to waste. Izuku had faith in Japan's number one since he was a kid watching him on the news, so why stop now?

Rize must have eaten someone bad because she was currently puking her guts out. It was probably that one man from yesterday who looked fine on the outside, but his liver looked halfway bloated. He smelt normal when she first met him, but his intestines smelled of alcohol. She wondered if this was what having a hangover was like, or if the alcohol in the man's body was interacting poorly with her ghoul genetics.

While her head did hurt, the most irritating part of it was being stuck over a toilet for the first half of the day. Even after she managed to puke all of it out, her stomach still hurt. She had eaten obvious alcoholics before and this had never happened to her before. This one must've been really bad.

She took headache pills earlier that morning, unsure if she could even take them. Nothing appeared to be killing her yet, so she assumed she was fine.

Opening her fridge, Rize looked at everything in. To her, it was full of the same things to eat, likely what any college student would experience, but to others, it would be one of the most disturbing scenes in the world. Severed human body parts were stacked atop each other inside of Rize's fridge. From poorly torn-off slices of flesh and fat, improperly removed limbs, and whatever else she could scrounge up for later.

Normally she would never do this, preferring to eat her food live and toy with them as they struggled to fight back. Now she was unable to afford such fun. She had to eat the boring way, the way that would make sure she didn't wind up dead or in prison. She hated it, especially how the cold can suppress the flavor of the meat from time to time, but she wasn't left with much choice.

Picking out the very first thing she saw, she opened it and began to eat from the Tupperware. Her stomach felt like it was turning, but she managed to keep her food down just fine. Putting it down in the sink, she grabbed another when she was done, this time throwing it in the microwave and turning on her television.

It was some game show that involved contestants being put in stressful situations, such as wearing speedos or bikinis and being put in a walk-in fridge for fifteen minutes. She listened to the last three episodes as she fell asleep on the couch, using it as background noise. They do one challenge per episode and they were on challenge eight, at the end of each challenge eliminating at least one contestant. It was one of the most stupid game shows she's ever seen, but it was funny watching people put themselves through hell.

The microwave beeped and she went to pick up her food, ready to practically consume it whole. She took very few bites of the meat and scarfed it down like a hungry shark. She finished it within seconds and threw the plastic container in the sink. Rize always needed to be thorough when cleaning her containers, lest the blood be left to sit and produce a metallic smell that her neighbors would think she was messing around with car batteries.

Immediately she grabbed the hydrogen peroxide from beneath the counter and poured it into the two Tupperware. Now she just needed to let them sit for a few minutes and clean them out with a cloth. It was annoying she had to do this when she would rather just eat all there was and leave without a trace, but this world required extra caution. She could behave as recklessly as she was allowed to previously.

A full month had passed since the investigation started and they still struggled to find the rest of the bodies. The Swede was the first only a week and a half ago, then yesterday they found the French man, who had three puncture wounds on his body.

Currently, right in front of them, they found the American boy whose skin was turned to bark. They saw obvious signs of a puncture wound, indicating he had been attacked by something. How the wound was angled and how cleanly he was pierced showed that it was no mere animal that did that to him.

No, it was clearly an attack performed by another person. Perhaps he was pierced by a long weapon like a javelin, as unlikely that was, or, what was more likely, someone's quirk. It perfectly matched the wound types on Andre's body as well, if only a little bit wider.

The current group of the investigation team found little need for an autopsy, given how likely it would be to convince the rest he was attacked, but the police would probably want to do one anyway. But that was only if they could. The boy's body was turned to stone from his hand to his elbow as he latched onto a rock, and the rest of his body was wood.

If they remembered correctly his quirk was transmutation. It allowed him to touch an object and turn his entire body into that material. So he touched something made of wood first, likely a nearby tree, before crawling over to a rock to change his body to something stronger but he bled out before then. Unfortunately, it didn't work on his internals, so once someone got past his skin he was done for.

They also found the body of the tour guide a while ago, or at least his lower half. The lower half was found nearly a mile away in a boar's den and was found being eaten by the piglets. Their mother stood guard and was quite aggressive, and unfortunately had to be put down by a handful of the armed officers. After traveling along the path made in the dirt, he wound up upon his upper half, near the American. The top half of Kenji's body saw his eyes plucked out of his head and his skin picked at by crows as they approached.

The way he was ripped in half was rather violent, indicating something only a bear was capable of. There were bears in the Mount Fuji area, but they're an uncommon sight and not strong enough to even do that. Not to say they wouldn't try, as the black bears in Japan could be quite aggressive at times.

Thinking back on Hugo, something was disturbing about the body that made the Heroes and detectives shiver. The corpse appeared to be eaten by something other than an animal. The bite marks on Hugo's body looked extremely human. The shape of the bite, the imprints of the teeth, it was all very unsettling. Even on Saito's body, the detectives could see feint human-shaped bite marks where they could, especially on exposed bone.

The students there recoiled in disgust, and one of the boys even began to cry. A girl among the group turned into Pixie-Bob to avert her eyes at the brutal image. The children were told to expect something like this, if not something even worse, but they were still just teenagers, most of them third years, ready to go off into the Hero world come the end of their term. Even the adults did their best to look at them, but could barely do so without gagging. They even looked at the American, Henry, who had his veins and arteries pulled out of the hole in his chest and chewed on like licorice.

"I'm calling someone else to deal with this shit," said one of the officers, in a nauseated voice.

Pixie-Bob called out to the other Heroes and their interns, "Let's head back. But first, Divinity?" She put her hand out to a Hero in a gold and white costume, who pulled out a flare gun from his hip. He handed it to her and planted a black colored flag in the ground between the two bodies.

Pixie-Bob then fired the flare gun, sending a bright red light soaring into the air. Soon it exploded, which caused Ragdoll to activate her quirk to link her mind to everyone for a brief moment. "Everyone to the flair!"

She never imagined herself being a person of comfort to a teenager before. It made her feel older than she was and she was thirty-one. Yet despite that, she was still eighteen... no, now was a bad time to think like that.

Even Pixie-Bob struggled to look at the bodies of these men. The only one she could stare at was the face of the American, and it was contorted with fear that had yet to decay, unlike the face of his former guide, Kenji. It felt like she was walking onto a scene out of a horror movie.

This entire debacle felt like foul play. Clean-shaped wounds that were similar across the bodies, human-like bite marks that could indicate cannibalism, and a far more difficult time locating the other victims. Their bodies might have been buried somewhere deep, and the ones they found were those that could not be buried in time. She was only theorizing, though.

"Hey, over here!" called one of the other Heroes, peering through the bushes.

"You kids stay here," she ordered the interns as they stayed behind with the others.

Pixie-Bob rushed over with a handful of officers to where the other Hero stood. They looked passed the shrubbery to find large streaks of blood leading a path through the forest. The only piece of human remains was a torn-off foot just a little off from the left of where they all stood. Aside from that they found no bodies.

At this point, they began to question if they would even find the rest. They had to have been scattered across the forest, very highly likely dead. Their tour guide was the only person among them who knew where to go, so the foreigners would become lost in this place. Some may have escaped and died of starvation or dehydration, or perhaps even come across some unkind animals. Since no one had come out to report anything, they all assumed the whole group died.

Pixie-Bob needed to talk to Native. He had some kind of tracking quirk that could help them, but he should be among Mandalay's group. At least now they finally have a lead.

Izuku sat in his room in the dark, anxiously tapping his desk as the only thing illuminating the room was an older video of All Might he had on pause. He was sitting in his desk chair, staring at the picture, wondering what his Idol would do in this situation. What he would do... All Might would never be in this situation. At his age, All Might probably had the strength and ability to effortlessly reach the top score leaving everyone else in the dust. It must have been an awe-inspiring sight for his teachers to watch.

Suddenly at his bedroom door, a knocking grabbed his at bedroom door. Startled, he jumped in his chair. "Ah! W-who's there!" A stupid question to ask, as it was only he and his mom present in the apartment for the moment.

His mother slowly freaked open the door at first, opening faster the closer she was able to get herself in the room. "Izuku! It's here!" she giddily exclaimed, anxiety coming off her body like waves.

He was anxious too, yet in truth, he was also just a little bit excited. Despite how badly he did in the entrance exam, there were still All Might's words ringing in the back of his head.

"Don't worry so much, Midoriya-shounen," he told him. "Everything will work itself out. Trust me..."

So he did. Izuku trusted All Might that everything would "work itself out". Excitedly and nervously, his mother gifted him the letter from U.A. and left him in his room to hear the news. Why she didn't stay as well he didn't know, but he assumed she may want to give him some time alone if things don't go as planned.

Whether he made it in or not was yet to be seen. His entire future, his dreams, everything... all of it was inside this letter, and part of him couldn't wait any longer.

End Note:

Hey guys. Thanks again for sticking around. I know you see me bombarding this fic with chapters right now, but don't expect updates to be this frequent in the future. It's really just that I have a lot of idea running around in my head at the moment and have been putting them together quickly.

Also I do want to try and give chapters more content in the future, but I can't think of any more segments or POVs that could fit naturally in a chapter that wouldn't just look like padding.

Thanks for stopping by and checking the fic out. Please leave a review and let me know what you think.